The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined a South Africa based subsidiary of Barclays bank $150,000 for making fictitious trades with another bank on the Chicago Board of Trade exchange. The CFTC fined Johannesburg based Absa Bank, Ltd., after it executed several prearranged, noncompetitive trades involving corn and soybean futures contracts with FirstRand Bank Ltd., which is also headquartered in Johannesburg. The CFTC sanctioned FirstRand for its role in the scheme last month. According to the CFTC, Absa made several pre-arranged corn and soybean trades with FirstRand Bank between June 2009 to August 2011. Employees of both banks held conference calls where they discussed the trades they would make on CBOT (which is owned by the CME Group). They talked about the quantity of contracts that would be traded, the price of each contract, and the timing of each trade, the CFTC said. When contacted by the CFTC, Absa said the prearranged trades were part of a strategy
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